Category: 404 Media

This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss crypto, journalists using AI, and a cool photo of Earth. JOSEPH: I can’t talk about the story just yet, but recently I ...

TeleGuard, an app that markets itself as a secure, end-to-end encrypted messaging platform which has been downloaded more than a million times, implements its encryption so poorly that an attacker can trivially access a user’s private key and decrypt their messages, multiple security researchers told 404 Media. TeleGuard also uploads ...

In 1969, the three astronauts of the Apollo 10 mission conducted a momentous “dress rehearsal” for putting humans on the lunar surface for the first time. It was a historic, inspiring moment for humanity; Astronaut John Young watched from a command module spacecraft as Thomas Stafford and Gene Cernan broke ...

Minnesota photojournalist Rob Levine and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press are suing the Federal Aviation Administration over a recently issued restriction that prevents drones from flying within 3,000 feet of Department of Homeland Security buildings and vehicles, an amorphous no-fly zone that encompasses Immigrations and Customs Enforcement ...

This story was reported with support from the MuckRock foundation. Conservative parents’ advocacy groups have been experimenting with using commercially available artificial intelligence tools to help them flag more books they’ve deemed pornographic to be removed from public schools and libraries. Even though LLMs are notoriously error-prone, and the books in ...

This week Matthew Gault joins us to discuss his article about Iran’s AI slop and LEGO-focused propaganda, and why the creators chose LEGO. After the break, Jason tells us all about the new automated system in baseball and the drama it’s causing. In the subscribers-only section, Sam walks us through ...

Sometimes people—especially those in the field of public relations doing a pray-and-spray campaign, but also small-time developers, the occasional delusional vibe-coder, and local dipshits—deliver messages to my inbox like a cat dropping a dead mouse on my doorstep. For the most part, I resist the bait: often, bad press is ...

🌘 Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week. Scientists have engineered tobacco plants to produce five psychedelic compounds that are normally found in a wide range of natural sources, including psilocybin mushrooms, ayahuasca, and ...

Sir Paul McCartney was banned from Reddit after sharing pictures of a concert in the r/PaulMcCartney subreddit. Over the weekend, Paul McCartney’s Reddit account attempted to share pictures from a show at Fonda Theatre to the site via a Dropbox link. Shortly afterwards the account was banned. Why did this ...

Thomson Reuters, the media company which is also a data broker, has long provided underlying personal data for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) tools, according to documents obtained by 404 Media and sources. There are also indications its data is now part of the Palantir system ICE uses to find ...